


the first step to dealing with a panic attack

by emilybrontes_snail



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: One Shot, Panic Attacks, Short One Shot, and i never want anything bad to ever happen to them, anyway they are BABEY, i know this is short pls do not hurt me, they are just lil babies and i love them, this is my first upload idk what to put here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 13:20:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21209210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilybrontes_snail/pseuds/emilybrontes_snail
Summary: Eddie Kaspbrak just watched his own mother get brutally murdered by the leper of his nightmares.  What he does next will warm your heart. <3





	the first step to dealing with a panic attack

Eddie’s first thought as he pulls open the drugstore’s door and stumbles into the summer air is, _where will I go?_ His heart is hammering in his chest, and his hands are shaking, and his breathing comes in gasps as he leans up against the brick exterior of Mr. Keane’s store and tries to think. But thinking is, unsurprisingly, difficult when you can’t breathe, and Eddie’s hands are shaking so badly that it takes him _4-5-6-7_ seconds to successfully grab onto the zipper of his fanny pack. It is subconscious, almost like blinking, to find his aspirator in the big pocket and bring it to his mouth. He doesn’t realize it’s comfortable—no, comforting to him either until he is digging in the pocket, past the pill containers and bifocals, past the boxed bandages and eye drops, past the neosporin and q-tips, without ever closing his fingers around the shape of his aspirator. His heart sinks—_I dropped it, didn’t I? I fucking dropped it, and now, now that fucking leper is going to have it, and I can’t go back in there, I can’t I can’t I can’t_—and his breathing is getting progressively more shallow each time he inhales. 

_Where will I go? _

Without really thinking about some sort of destination, Eddie pushes himself off of the wall and walks up the street. He is one catalyst away from running; the only thing hindering him from doing that is the shallow wheezing and hitching of each breath he takes, but he pushes past a group of younger girls holding ice cream cones without even glancing back at them as one shouts, “Asshole!” over her shoulder and another flips him the bird. Eddie doesn’t hear them. All he hears is the sound of his mother screaming in the drugstore’s basement and the rattling of that chained up leper coming closer and closer. All he hears is his own terrified cries as he freezes up and finally runs back upstairs and outside. 

_I left her. I left her there with that fucking leper, my own mother, and now she is infected or, or, or dead, or something, and it’s my fault, and now I don’t have a mom and I have no where to go and I can’t fucking breathe and god, that fucking leper why was that even down there why was she down there what the fuck am I going to do now—_

Eddie glances up as he passes the arcade on Main Street. He suddenly knows what to do. One quick look through the front window tells him all he needs to know—he sees the familiar Hawaiian print in front of the Streetfighter game, right where he knew the familiar Hawaiian print would be, and Eddie pulls open the arcade’s door with a rattling breath and stumbles inside. His breathing is getting worse and worse, but he manages to let out one word, one name— 

“Richie—” 

  


  


Richie has a rule when it comes to Streetfighter: the game comes first, before anyone, and if you have the audacity to try and interrupt him when playing it, he will not give you the time of day, let alone turn around. The other Losers have tried to talk to him while he is in the middle of playing a round, and he has never given them the satisfaction of turning his attention to their wishes. But this time Richie’s whole body swivels around to face Eddie immediately. 

“Eds?”

Eddie can’t speak. He begins to walk toward the other boy, tripping over his own feet and fear as he does so, but Richie, focusing only on the ragged breathing that seems far too loud in this arcade and stark white of Eddie’s face and the way his trembling hands remind of his grandmother’s last time they visited her in that creepy Vermont nursing home, moves faster. Suddenly he is there in front of Eddie, one hand on his arm and the other grabbing his fingers, and he speaks, low, trying to get Eddie to focus on what is in front of him, rather than what he had just seen. 

“Eddie, what’s going on? Do you want to go outside? It’s really cramped in here, and dark, and—hey, let’s go to my house, you can get water and lay down, okay?” 

Eddie just nods, eyes shut tight; he can feel tears beginning to well up inside of his eyelids, and his throat tightened even more, this time because he was about to cry, when Richie started talking. So, Eddie says nothing, and Richie guides him quickly out of the dark arcade. 

  


  


What surprises Eddie the most is that he doesn’t actually start crying until Richie shuts his bedroom door behind the two of them. It is like a dam broke (and for a moment, he thinks of the dam he built with Bill and Ben at the beginning of the summer, and he wonders if they are safe now on their own); he sits still on Richie’s bed as tears pour down his face, breath hitching and shuddering and gasping. Richie sets a glass of water on the floor by the door, hydration pushed out of his mind by Eddie’s sobs in front of him, and sits gingerly on the bed next to him. For once, Richie doesn’t know what to say. He can’t think of any way to alleviate this situation, to sneak in some laughter through tears, so he doesn’t say anything at all. He just reaches for Eddie, and Eddie reaches back, and they stay like that for a long time—Richie’s long arms wrapped tight around the smaller boy’s shaking frame, Eddie clutching the front of Richie’s shirt like he won’t ever let go, like he’s finally found some strange form of safety, and he’s latching on for dear life. 

Richie feels restless and nervous. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and he doesn’t know when Eddie will tell him what’s going on. His leg started to bounce a few minutes ago, but he doesn’t want Eddie to feel like he can’t let go. His face is burning, and although he hasn’t said a prayer since he was ten years old, he is thanking God that Eddie’s face is buried into the folds of his shirt and unable to see how red he is. 

When Richie has his own emotions under control, he raps the top of Eddie’s head with his knuckles and murmurs, “Hey, you wanna talk?” 

Eddie sighs, a deep rattling inhale and a heavy exhale, and untangles himself from Richie, who stands up to fetch the water glass by the door, hoping his face is losing the blush. 

Richie sits back down on the bed and hands Eddie the glass. 

“Well shit, Eds—you got my shirt all wet,” he says, a smile on the edge of his lips, and Eddie can’t help but notice how softly he said it. A small giggle escapes his own mouth before he drinks deeply and begins to explain what he saw.

**Author's Note:**

> it's short, yes, but it's also a little bit wholesome :)  
anyway, i hope u liked this!!


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